Tag Archives: FBI

The biggest danger from terrorism in this country is from Domestic terrorism. In today’s political climate that in vast majority means right wing terrorism, wherein Militias and various fringe groups look to kill their fellow Americans.

The weird thing about this one… Is these guys should be old enough to know better.

Four North Georgia men accused of being members of a fringe militia group were arrested Tuesday by federal authorities for planning to make the deadly toxin ricin and obtain explosives, federal authorities said.

Authorities said that, beginning in March, the men held clandestine militia meetings and discussed using toxic agents and assassinations in an effort to undermine federal and state government and advance their interests.

The four men taken into federal custody are: Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, and Toccoa residents Dan Roberts, 67; Ray H. Adams, 65; and Samuel J. Crump, 68. They are charged with

“These defendants, who are alleged to be part of a fringe militia group, are charged with planning attacks against their own fellow citizens and government,” U.S. Attorney Sally Yates said. “To carry out their agenda, two of the defendants allegedly purchased purported explosives and a silencer, while the other two defendants took steps to attempt to produce a deadly biological toxin.”

According to federal authorities, Thomas, Roberts, Adams and others who attended the meetings discussed targeting various government officials, including employees of the IRS. The meetings were monitored and tape recorded by a confidential source for the FBI, authorities said.

Complaints unsealed Tuesday allege that Roberts knew a man who had manufactured the biological toxin, ricin, and had access to the castor beans used to make it.

During one of the group’s meetings in September, which was recorded by the confidential source, Crump said he would like to make 10 pounds of ricin and disperse it in various U.S. cities, including Atlanta, the complaints said. Crump said ricin could be blown from a car traveling on the interstates.

“I think the connection is virtually inescapable… that the device was planted and left there to target the marchers or bystanders,” Frank Harrill, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Spokane office, said late Tuesday.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 15 different “hate groups” operate in Washington state and six others just over the border in Idaho — including the white supremacist group Aryan Nations. The FBI said the men or women responsible are being considered “armed and dangerous.”

Whatever the motive, Spokane mayor Mary Verner said the attempted bombing was “unacceptable.”

“I was struck that on a day when we celebrate Dr. King, a champion of non-violence, we were faced with a significant violent threat,” Verner said Tuesday. “This is unacceptable in our community, or any community.”

Just half an hour before the Martin Luther King Day parade was scheduled to begin Monday, three workers spotted a suspicious package with visible wires on a bench, the FBI said.

This one apparently solved by the work of a local newspaper. Morris may have been murdered by the KKK for nothing other than the perspicacity of being a black man operating a successful business with both black and white customers.

Frank Morris was in the Apron and visor in the middle of the group standing in front of his store

Early on the morning of December 10, 1964, Frank Morris ran out of his shoe store, his clothes and skin on fire.

People who saw him in the hospital afterward said the African-American businessman was so badly burned they didn’t recognize him.

“Only the bottom of his feet weren’t burned. He was horrible to look at,” said the Rev. Robert Lee Jr., now 96.

Morris survived for four days before dying — long enough to tell the FBI that two men had broken into his store while he slept, smashed windows, doused the place in gasoline and told him: “Get back in there, nigger.”

Locals in Ferriday, the small Louisiana town where Morris lived and died, remember him as having both white and black customers, which was rare for black businesses in the segregated South in the days before civil rights. He would come out of his store onto the sidewalk so white female customers wouldn’t have to go inside alone.

No one has ever been charged with killing him. But Wednesday, more than 46 years after his death at age 51, a local newspaper has named two men it believes were part of a Ku Klux Klan “wrecking crew” that torched his store and murdered him.

One, Arthur Spencer, is still alive. The second, O.C. “Coonie” Poissot, died in 1992.

The Concordia Sentinel, based in Ferriday, reports Spencer’s son and the brother of his ex-wife both say Spencer told them he was involved in the killing.

Spencer’s ex-wife, Brenda Rhodes, says Poissot told her that he and Spencer were on the wrecking crew that burned Morris’s store.

“It came at a time of great lawlessness in this parish, when the Klan was in control of this parish — or if not in control, a great influence,” said Sentinel editor Stanley Nelson, using the Louisiana term for county.

The newspaper’s sources all indicated that the Klan wrecking crew didn’t necessarily expect Morris to be in the store when they burned it.

Spencer’s former brother-in-law, Bill Frasier, said he’d once asked Spencer if he ever killed anyone.

“We did accidentally one time,” Spencer said, according to Frasier.

Sentinel editor Nelson said many racially motivated killings in that era were done by people who might not have planned to commit murder — but should have known what they were doing.

“Almost all of the people that were killed in those days, no one set out to kill,” he said. Some beatings got too violent, for example, he said.

Phylicia Barnes, a 16-year-old North Carolina girl who disappeared while visiting relatives in Baltimore, may have met with foul play, police say.

Authorities in Maryland are stepping up efforts to locate Phylicia Barnes, a 16-year-old North Carolina girl who disappeared while visiting relatives inBaltimore. But a local police official said the national media need to take note of the case.

“We are doing everything we can,” Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told AOL News, noting that more than 35 detectives are working on the case, as well as two teams from the FBI.

“We would really like the national outlets to help us out here, so if somebody sees her in Missouri, they are able to alert authorities quickly,” Guglielmi continued. “It has been incredibly frustrating for me. We’ve been pitching this since the 29th [and] have not gotten any traction. This case is no different than the Natalee Holloway case. The only difference is Phylicia is from North Carolina, she went missing in Baltimore and she is African-American.”

Guglielmi added, “I just think if we could get America just to see her picture — that is all we are asking — maybe that will lead detectives to a break and save this young lady’s life.”

Phylicia lives in Monroe, N.C., but was visiting relatives in Baltimore. She was last seen around 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 28, when she left the apartment of her 27-year-old half-sister, Deena Barnes. According to relatives, Phylicia told her sister she was going shopping.

What happened to the teenager next remains a mystery, police said.

“Time is working against us,” Guglielmi said. “She has been missing 10 days. … This is not a runaway. We suspect some type of foul play. The question is, What kind of foul play?”

“We got some new footage [from] an apartment complex in the area, so we are reviewing that,” Guglielmi said. “We are continuing interrogations, [and] we have a couple more search warrants and things to process.”

Family members have described Phylicia as a straight-A student who was to graduate early from Union Academy in Monroe and planned to go to Towson University in Maryland. Her father, Russell Barnes, has said it is out of character for her to take off without notifying someone.

There has been no activity on any of Phylicia’s social-networking accounts, and police say her cell phone has been turned off since the day of her disappearance.

Authorities are looking at two possible scenarios in the case, Guglielmi said. The first is that someone in the Baltimore area did “something terrible to her.” The second is that she was abducted and taken elsewhere, he said.

Anyone who had contact with Phylicia in the hours leading up to her disappearance is considered a person of interest, police said. According to Guglielmi, Phylicia’s half-sister’s lifestyle makes the potential suspect pool large and difficult to narrow down.

“[Phylicia’s] sister is college-age, and she had a lot of friends coming in and out,” he said. “I would describe it probably like a dorm room setting. They party, maybe do a little drinking, [but] there is no activity there that concerned us — no illicit drug use or sex parties or anything ridiculous. She was just a young lady with a lot of friends, [and] that makes our job difficult.”

Authorities have conducted interviews with all of the individuals whom they know were present at the apartment on the day Phylicia went missing. They are now interviewing those individuals again to see if their stories are consistent, police said.

Investigators have also served a search warrant at the half-sister’s apartment. Items of interest have since been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va.

“We have taken out pieces of bedding and pieces of flooring, but we haven’t gotten any smoking gun in terms of the case,” Guglielmi said. “A couple more evidentiary things have to be processed, but it is a bit frustrating for detectives because usually you are guided by some kind of physical evidence, and in this case, so far we haven’t been able to find anything.”

The FBI’s Baltimore branch confirmed to AOL News that it is assisting in the investigation.

“We have a unit here in Baltimore called the Crimes Against Children Unit, which is assisting the Baltimore police homicide unit in trying to locate Ms. Barnes,” Special Agent Rich Wolf said.

Nine people, including three Prince George’s County police officers, were arrested Monday on charges involving drugs, guns and a large-scale scheme to distribute untaxed cigarettes and alcohol, according to federal officials.

Sources said the charges are connected to the recent arrest of Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson, but it is unclear exactly how the cases are related. The arrests are part of a larger investigation of corruption in Prince George’s.

The nine arrested Monday were taken into custody in the early morning hours during an operation that involved 150 law enforcement officers executing as many as a dozen search warrants.

According to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, Prince George’s County liquor store owner Amrik Singh Melhi and others paid Delabrer and Kim to guard and secure the distribution of untaxed cigarettes and alcohol in Maryland and Virginia. They and four others are charged with conspiracy to commit extortion.

Simic is charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and use of firearms in drug trafficking.

The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of $3.5 million, 25 properties, 13 vehicles and 84 bank accounts affiliated with the crimes.

This week’s Orange Jumpsuit Award goes to Prince Georges, Maryland County Executive Jack Johnson, and his wife, Leslie. I’ll check and see if I can find a model with a little bit more “room” to hide all that cash!

“Tear up the check,” the document stated, referring to Jack Johnson’s demands to his wife, while federal agents were at the door of their Mitchellville, Md. home.

The check Johnson was telling his wife to tear up was a $100,000 bribe from developers, according to federal documents.

When police arrested Leslie Johnson, they found $79,600 in cash, in her underwear, according to the sworn federal affidavit.

The F.B.I. agents also claim Johnson received $5,000 on November 5th, from developers to use his influence to get them bids in projects, according to the document. The documents state Johnson received $15,000 more Friday morning in the first leg of the raid.

Federal agents confronted Johnson after a meeting they say was captured on videotape. They say he claimed the money was for a party he was throwing at the end of his term as County Executive. They let him go.

But agents say Jack Johnson almost immediately called his wife on his wiretapped cell phone and told her to tear up the check in the underwear draw in their room, federal agents said in the sworn statement. She tore up the check and flushed it.

“Do you want me to put it down the toilet?,” Leslie Johnson asked, according to the affidavit. Then agents heard the sound of a toilet flush over the wire-tap.

They each face 20 years if convicted of all charges, and three years of supervised release. They are also facing fines of, no more than, $250,000.

U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein says he expects to charge additional defendents. And FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard McFeely issued a blunt warning: If you’re involved in “pay to play, it’s far better to talk to us now than for us to come knocking at your door.”

The allegations of pay to play involving county officials and developers in Prince George’s go back years. A lawsuit by a New Carrollton developer alleges a number of county councilmembers were involved.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland confirmed Jack Johnson’s arrest earlier Friday. A 9NEWS NOW crew was at Johnson’s home when he was put in a car and driven away Friday afternoon. Neighbors at the scene said they were surprised by the arrest. A plumber outside the home told 9NEWS NOW that he was at the home to “check the plumbing and some toilets…for some evidence, I guess.”

Rep. Donna Edwards issued a statement Friday afternoon about the arrest. In the statement, she says: “The arrest of Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson is in the hands of law enforcement and the court system. I am saddened personally by these developments and look forward to a fair and just resolution. However, my primary concern remains that the needs of residents of Prince George’s County continue to be met at all levels of government.”